Lets cut to the chase, and get the details out of the way:
the good:
- i love the new form factor
- really surprised by how much I liked the keyboard(s)
the bad:
- no copy/paste
- no push email (fwding to a mobile.me account doesn't count)
- no email search
- no google calendar sync
- poor battery life
- no google talk or blackberry messenger
- slow software
If you couldn't tell, I've been using a blackberry for a bit. I made the jump to the iphone because I thought it was ready, and I really wanted it to work (I'm moving so San Fran soon, and I wouldn't be cool there without one!).
I walked out of my hotel near Market St in San Fran last saturday and stumbled into the iphone line. By the time by buddy showed up for breakfast, I was already at the front and 30 minutes later I had the new 3G!
Little did I know that after 3 days of running out of battery power, and maniacally tapping an unresponsive screen I returned the thing back and paid the %10 restocking fee so I could use my blackberry curve again. I'm pretty sure I was the first to wait in line to return one.
My over all impression of the iphone is that its a great first smartphone. If you've never used one before, this one's easy to learn, and if you're not a power user you'll probably get much more use out of the iphone.
If you're a power user, and you've learned how to use every single feature on the treo, dash, blackberry, etc. Then you're probably going to be un-impressed. In fact, you'll be pretty pissed that so much hype has been built up around a phone that still doesn't do some of the basics.
I use google apps for my work email and calendar, so I can't live with out push email or an over-the-air calendar sync. That in itself is almost a deal closer. Add in the fact that I couldn't search through the emails on the phone, and I couldn't copy/paste information from the emails, and you really have a useless device.
Yet again, I'm a pretty hardcore user. For work I get a lot of emails, so searchings critical, and many of those emails contain information I need to copy and paste into other emails or into a browser (sometimes the phone numbers don't show up as a link, so I couldn't even dial them from the email on the iphone).
Last, was the performance and the battery life. In terms of speed, I felt that the thing was always lagging. You push on app, and you typically had 1 or 2 seconds before you could start using the app. I would click on the calendar, and then click on the "+" several times before it actually worked and opened a new calendar appointment. Everything on the Blackberry is instantaneous, and it keeps up with your thought process....... That is, if you have enough battery power for the phone to still be running.
When I first got my blackberry curve, I was obviously excited so I had to surf the web all day, test out all the features (including wifi), and I had to download all the extra add-on apps. This left me very impressed with the battery life. The wifi couldnt be kept on all day, but with heavy usage of the important features I could still make it through the whole day easily. No for my first morning with the iphone, I woke up at 8am, and I didnt even make it till 1pm before it was completely dead.
I understand there are a lot of issues involved in battery life, and its not an easy task. Thats why Apple didn't do the 3G the first time around. Either way I wasn't impressed, and I was just pissed when I saw advice like this suggesting I turn off all the new features to get reasonable battery life.
Back to my Blackberry it is. Maybe to wait for the bold, the thunder, or maybe even android?!